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Repair Costs for Hubble Are Vexing to Scientists

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 - Some scientists questioned whether a repair mission for the aging Hubble Space Telescope was worth a projected cost of $1 billion to $2 billion at a hearing of the House Science Committee on Wednesday.

Both scientists and legislators praised the orbiting observatory for the many contributions it had made to science since it was launched in 1990. But the telescope needs servicing to continue working.

Representative Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican and the chairman of the committee, said at the hearing to examine options for the telescope that Congress would have to deal with the issue in coming weeks as it considered next year's NASA budget, which has been rumored to exclude any money to service and save the observatory.

"Is it worth saving the Hubble even if that means taking money away from other NASA science programs?" Mr. Boehlert asked. "We have to make some hard choices about whether a Hubble mission is worth it now, when moving ahead is likely to have an adverse impact on other programs."

Dr. Joseph Taylor, a Nobel laureate and physicist at Princeton University who headed a National Academy of Sciences committee that set priorities for astronomy missions in this decade, said his panel earlier made servicing the telescope a priority of the space program. But at that time, Mr. Taylor said, the mission was supposed to cost $300 million to $400 million.

Dr. Taylor said he favored servicing the telescope at the original cost estimates, but would not support the mission if it required major delays in other programs or reordering the priorities set by his committee.

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The telescope has been serviced four times by space shuttle astronauts, and a fifth mission of repairs and upgrades had been set for 2004. But the shuttle fleet was grounded after the Columbia accident in 2003, and Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, said last year that he would not authorize another shuttle repair mission because of safety concerns. When this decision drew criticism, NASA agreed to consider sending a robot mission to fix the telescope.

Another National Academy of Sciences committee, which studied telescope options, concluded in December that the observatory was a top science priority that should be saved. The mission should be done by a shuttle, it said, which would present little added risk to a human crew compared to any other flight.

Representative Bart Gordon of Tennessee, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the NASA estimate for a shuttle mission needed clarification. In answer to committee budget questions in 2002, Mr. O'Keefe wrote that the cost of the shuttle mission was included in the long-term budget of the space flight office, not the science budget.

Dr. Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said previous shuttle missions to the telescope were charged in the $300 million to $400 million range, which was acceptable to scientists. If the cost suddenly went above $1 billion, Dr. Beckwith said, he would have to reconsider his strong support for a service mission.